Babel's Fall
by Cead
Summary: Set halfway through S5, full synopsis inside. Morgana's plan pushes Mordred too far, and his actions make him turn to Arthur for help. Merlin worries for Arthur's safety after Gaius' new assistant starts acting suspiciously. Gwaine obsesses himself with strength, determined not to fail.


**Afternoon/morning/evening or whatever it is now (I'm not used to doing them in the right order). I just want to say thank you for taking time out our life to read this. It means a lot, it really does! **

**Special thanks to ForeverThePretender for the encouragement etc - she knows she's awesome, or at least she should. **

**This fic is set about halfway through season five, after Guinevere has been to the Cauldron off Arianrhod and before Mordred goes all evil and breaks my heart completely. The extract at the beginning is from the Bible, but I think that may be slightly obvious. It's all about pushing the limit and just how far the characters are prepared to go in pursuit of their goals, and how their pursuit of love, strength, knowledge and shelter can lead to grave misjudgement.**

**Synopsis: Morgana's last wish drives Mordred to new extremes, and to try and stop himself going mad he turns to Merlin for help. Guinevere longs for a baby, but Arthur's strange behaviour makes her wary of broaching the subject. A new assistant for Gaius makes Merlin worry. Gwaine is obsessed with becoming stronger, determined not to fail. Leon reflects on the loneliness of his life.**

**No particluar slashes except those which the show either endorses or makes BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS (and one hopefully rather fluffy one in the distance). No planned character death, but who knows, I can be rather bipolar when writing... Dark!Arthur included.**

_'Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth."_

_But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other."_

_So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.'_

Morgana looked across the table at Mordred, and wondered if he was sick. He hadn't taken a single bite of the food laid out en masse for him, and his eyes were distant. The knife in his hand played havoc with the candlelight, glistening like the snow she remembered around his feet when she had seen him again after all those years. His skin had been so much paler than she remembered, and he was thinner than before. She felt like she could have snapped him like the wishbone they had cracked together but an hour before. She ran her finger across the rim of her goblet. The red wine below was like a dark abyss. The only vision she could see inside it was her eyes - a prism of green and black. She bit her lip.

'Aren't you going to say anything?' Morgana mumbled.

Mordred's gaze slowly slid back to her. The glint from the knife settled on his cheek. 'I wasn't aware you invited me here for small talk,' he replied.

'After being apart for so long, I thought you might have a little more to talk about.'

During the silence that followed, Morgana listened to the wind howling outside. It battered against the windows, baying to break the blue glass. When Mordred finally spoke, the wind abated slightly. 'There isn't much to know. Arthur continues to reign over Camelot, you are stuck in an icy castle at the other end of the world - that hasn't changed.'

'True,' she said.

'So why am I here then?'

She raised the goblet to her lips and let the wine trickle down her throat. 'I've discovered a spell that could change the course of our battle. A possession spell.' A small smirk lifted the corners of her wine-wetted lips.

Interest stirred in Mordred's eyes, but a slight disappointment clouded his expression. 'The last attempt didn't go so well,' he muttered.

A flash of anger enflamed her heart at his words. The wind outside howled in anguish. But she abated. Should she tell him?

Yes, it's true he might understand. Yes, it might even persuade him. And yes, Mordred's involvement would undoubtedly place Camelot at her feet. But no, now wasn't the right time. No, she would wait.

Morgana took another drink.

'I was hoping that this time would be different,' she fumed. Her fingers twitched nervously.

'I guessed that. Different how?'

Strange, she thought, that he would come here without hesitation and spend the whole time belittling her. 'The spell itself is weaker,' Morgana said, 'but the subject and the consequences are much...more...severe.'

Mordred put down the knife, but kept his grip. 'And which unfortunate soul have you decided to prey on this time? Not Arthur, surely? Only that would have been the logical choice for the first round after all.' Morgana nodded begrudgingly. He raised an eyebrow. 'Straight for the jugular, then.'

'Indeed.'

Silence followed again. She allowed it to settle as Mordred thought. The wind outside had gone altogether, but the rolling black clouds on the horizon meant it wasn't for long. The thunder was already booming.

'And why do you need me?' Mordred spoke through a clenched jaw. His fingers were wrapped around the knife like a dead man's grasp and the knuckles were skeletal white. Morgana rose from the table and lit the candles on the fireplace with a small internal incantation. She lingered by the window, staring at the oncoming storm in the sky.

'I need you to make sure that the events that shall come to pass will be safeguarded. If you do this for me, Camelot will fall and so will the laws that persecute our kind. We will be free.'

There was another boom of thunder. Morgana thought she saw a flash in the distance.

Mordred cleared his throat with something that resembled an affirmative. How far they had come together, she thought. And was this all there was to be left? He seemed numb to her, as if nothing more than air occupied the space between them. Perhaps that's all he saw when he looked at her now. Nothing. Just an empty vessel. But if that were true, why was he here? The storm advanced quickly towards the castle, cracking and booming above.

The words came as a surprise to her. She had expected that he would remain silent until taking his leave. Instead, she had the breath pushed out of her by his eventual snapping of the silence. 'I've been having visions, Morgana,' he said, 'and in one of them, I found out your secret.'

Her breath, or what was left of it, caught in her throat and she gave out a small noise of almost helplessness.

'You must have found out by now about the tumour in your brain.'

There was a flash of lighting outside. Yes, she knew about the tumour.

'At the back of your skull.'

Yes.

'Where it's too dangerous to attempt removal-'

...yes.

'-for fear of either permanent damage or-

Don't say it.

'-death.'

Damn.

Her eyes were burning with blocked tears. She wouldn't allow them to fall. 'You've certainly been doing a bit of research then, haven't you?'

He rose from the table and went to her side. There was no sense of sentiment in his eyes or his face. The closeness between them was cold. He refused to look at her, just staring at the storm. The light from the window, or what was left of it, shone of his armour. The candlelight danced on the ends of his hair. This was one image that stayed with her, Mordred in the light.

'That's why you want this spell to be on Arthur,' he said, 'because you can't bear the thought of him outliving you when he has the blood of so many on his hands. Not to mention that spilled by his father. And the thought of Camelot's shadow standing over your grave is overwhelming. And repulsive.'

He had always been able to read her. She ought to have felt exposed, like a book laid out for his eyes to devour. But no, she didn't. She couldn't explain it.

'Have you ever heard the tales of the East, Mordred?'

The question took him by surprise. He answered no.

'The Southerners would sit around campfires in the night and recount the stories of the people they had conquered. I would listen occasionally. And there were always stories they told about the gods. One was my favourite - the Tower of Babel. Do you know it?'

He shook his head. She took a breath:

'The Eastern people believe that a long time ago, there was only one language. And using that language, they began to build a tower. The tower was to keep them united and to stop them from being scattered across the world. But God looked down, and when he saw the tower he ordered that it be stopped, and he confused his people by giving them all different languages so they could not communicate. The tower was never complete. The people were scattered. And thus, divided. That is my plan.'

Mordred looked at her with dazed eyes. He blinked, then said, 'I don't understand how something such a story can be relevant to this.'

Another boom of thunder crashed above them. 'I am the last High Priestess,' she said. 'I am God. The tower is Camelot. The language is Arthur. If I can divide the people using Arthur, Camelot will fall. Do you understand?'

'I understand,' Mordred nodded. 'Your last wish.'

Yes.

The storm outside was mesmerising. The lightning crackled in the clouds above, and the thunder didn't boom outside - it boomed through her chest. The wind had whipped up again, thrashing against the window. She jumped slightly. Mordred caught her arm.

'You're scared,' he observed.

* * *

The smoke haunted her most. Not the indescribable heat, not the unearthly howls. Not the blinding ash, not the crushing panic. The smoke. It tore at her eyes, her nose, her lungs. It choked her in a way that she hadn't even thought was possible. Her ribs felt like they were piercing her insides. Every gasp was like an exorcism. Her ears were scratched by the gas.

And it was black everywhere.

She ran hither and thinner, not knowing anymore what was left or what was right or wrong or up or back. She collided with stone before she could think and fell to the ground. Her head landed on something soft. It wasn't until she blacked out she realised it was her mother's body.

There were flickers of memory where she remembered a thicket of forest and a few blurred faces, but apart from that, waking up in a dark room shrouded in bed sheets was an unprecedented shock. Her eyes fell first on a candle by the bedside. She jumped and almost fell off the bed trying to run from it. A hushing sound from a blurry figure at the other end of the room calmed her down. The figure came towards her, and took the blurrier outline of a man, then the face of a young man with dark black hair. He called someone's name and she saw another figure, which took the blurrier outline of another man, then the wrinkled face of an old man with pale white hair. She realised how slow she was taking things in, then tried to remember how she got in the room in the first place.

The young man helped her lean back onto a soft pillow whilst the one he called Gaius tried to explain to her where she was and how she got there. She became aware of a tingling sensation on her left arm. She took off the sheets and looked down at it, but her eyes still couldn't focus. There was a vague redness that she could make out, but in the heat of the moment with sheets and faces and names and memories, she couldn't tell what it was.

'What's your name?'

She didn't know who said it, but she answered anyway. 'Maria.' She barely recognised her own voice. The sensation of talking irritated her throat, and she started to cough until her eyes began watering. Once she stopped, things seemed a little clearer. She made out the face of the young man beside her. He had sharp blue eyes and even sharper cheekbones - he had a kind of intelligent intensity. Eventually, she realised his name was Merlin. He reiterated how she had been saved in the fire by a Knight, brought to Camelot and treated for burns and smoke inhalation. He told her that her mother, father, older sister, younger brother, baby sister, cousin, and grandmother had all perished. She felt numb.

There was another muttering of meeting with someone or other to find out how the fire started, but she didn't take it in. They were gone.

* * *

Leon looked out over the training ground as night began to settle in around the city. His muscles ached from the constant stream of battling with swords, maces, archery, daggers, armour, bruises, blood, sweat. There was a warm inviting bath waiting in his quarters. But he was still standing by the window, watching the lone figure pound one of the mannequins with an axe, then switching to a sword, then abandoning the weapons altogether and pummelling the lifeless dummy with his fists.

'Is he still out there?' Mordred walked down the corridor, spying Leon by the glass. Leon nodded. 'I don't know what's wrong with him. Ever since Morgana, Gwaine's been obsessed. I've barely seen him outside the training grounds. Sometimes I come down and it looks like he hasn't been back home at all. I've heard he stays there all night most days, just training.'

Mordred looked down. Gwaine has just snapped the mannequin in half completely, and turned to running up and down the grounds. 'That can't be healthy,' the younger of them said. 'Perhaps we should talk to him.'

Leon sighed and turned to his companion. 'I've tried, but he isn't in much of a mood for talk anymore.'

'I wonder if that's such a bad thing,' he smiled.

It would normally have been cause for a grin, but his sincerity suppressed it. 'I'll get Percival to speak to him when he gets back again from Redhill.'

'I thought he was back?'

Leon had to clear his throat for a moment. 'He came back after the fire, but he's been posted back out again. I'd better go, I've got a bath waiting.' Gwaine had picked up a shield and was weighing in his arm. He lunged into an invisible

Leon turned and left, only to be called back moments later. 'You haven't seen Merlin around here, have you?'

He said no and went on his way.


End file.
